Robert Levin

American keyboardist and musicologist Robert Levin earned widespread recognition for his command of Classical-era performance practice, having finished multiple significant incomplete compositions by Mozart and additional composers. Born on October 13, 1947, in Brooklyn, New York, Levin showed early promise at the piano yet initially concentrated on composition, beginning lessons with Stefan Wolpe in 1957 while also studying piano under Louis Martin. In 1960, while still enrolled at Andrew Jackson High School, he traveled to France to pursue composition with Nadia Boulanger and piano with Alice Gaultier-Léon at the Fontainebleau Conservatoire Américain, returning for further instruction with other leading figures until 1964. Levin subsequently entered Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude after completing an undergraduate thesis examining Mozart’s unfinished works, and was promptly appointed to teach music theory at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute on the recommendation of pianist Rudolf Serkin; he additionally held positions at the State University of New York at Purchase from 1970 to 1983 and, at Boulanger’s suggestion, returned to the Fontainebleau Conservatoire during the later years of that appointment. Between 1986 and 1993 he served on the faculty of the Freiburg Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Germany before joining Harvard’s teaching staff, where he continues as professor emeritus. Levin sustained an active performing career at the keyboard, launching his recording output in 1986 as accompanist to violist Kim Kashkashian on the ECM album Elegies and maintaining a commitment to contemporary repertoire alongside his focus on Classical-period works; the next year he gave his first solo recital at Alice Tully Hall in New York. Beginning in 1994 he embarked on a widely praised sequence of Mozart piano concerto recordings performed on fortepiano with the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood, later extending the project across Decca and additional labels. In the late 1990s he also documented Beethoven’s five piano concertos on fortepiano for Archiv Produktion. These Classical-era releases incorporate features such as improvised cadenzas, elements believed to have been customary in Mozart’s era. By the early 2020s Levin’s discography exceeded forty albums encompassing Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, contemporary pieces, and assorted chamber repertory. He directed the Sarasota Music Festival artistically from 2007 to 2017 and, in 2022, moved to ECM to record Mozart’s keyboard sonatas on the composer’s own fortepiano.